GNU Package Management System

[Leonardo Lopes Pereira]

I will describe my proposal to a GNU Package Management System (that I
will call GPMS on this doc).

The first point is that I think that a GPMS have to be something very
flexible. We need something where people can download binary packages,
they can use a simple tool to compile the source or can install a
package without any specific tools.

Another important point, but obvious, is that it will use all of the
already existing GNU tools that can help the work of the GPMS, like
wget, GNU Arch, stowfs, et cetera. And it will use all the advantages
that Hurd can provides (like stowfs).

It needs to be wrote in a way that we can easily implement many
interfaces to it. So, I think that It could be a C library and we will
be able to have a ncurses interface, a "command line interface", a gtk
interface...

The most important thing on GPMS is how packages will be managed. IMHO,
to manage packages we need 2 directories. The first will be /packages
or /stow, that will be where packages will put their binaries. The
second will be /var/'GPMS', where every package will have a small file
with some data about it, some information like 'full name',
'description', 'version', 'library dependencies' and 'binary
dependencies'... Something simple to people be able to create one using
they favorite editor.

When a package is removed, GPMS will check if the library dependencies
are used by other packages, if they aren't, they are removed. If you try
to remove a package or library that are a dependency of other, the
'GPMS' will return an error.

To install packages we have many options. The one is use the advantages
of GNU Source Installer to create packages from source that users
auto-tools in a proper way. Other is a person install the package
on /packages/'package' (or /stow/'package') and create
the /var/'GPMS'/'package' by hand. Another is the use of a binary
package, that already have a /packages/'package' and
a /var/'GPMS'/'package'

The update of packages are done installing a package that will overwrite
the other.

-- 
---
leonardolopespereira at gmail.com

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